My calculations indicate that, assuming that casting ABar when MB procs doesn't interfere with the proc, it is better DPS to use Barrage-Missile-Barrage-Blast rather than Missile-Barrage on MB procs.
Still working on that math on the ABx3 rotation with MBAM as soon as it procs, but the DPM number for it in Lhivera's post is a little off... the total mana calculated for ABlast (1108.95) is not used when calculating total mana cost (783.35 is used instead).
Unless I'm missing something, the DPM for the ABx3 rotation is 12.12 -- which is not worth it for an increase of less than 6 DPS.
If the actual intent is to make Fire be the unstoppable king of AOE damage, then there are two possibilities:
1) It's worthless.
2) AOE is so utterly prevalent in level 80 encounter design that you actually want a Fire Mage specifically for that purpose...at which point it perhaps becomes mandatory, which is as bad as being worthless.
This is the problem. Blizzard seems to intend the Fire tree to be completely based around AoE. The problem with that? There is no encounter I can think of that was so focused on AoE that you had to spec just to compensate. Any spec can spam AE and do respectably well in AoE encounters. You absolutely cannot trade single-target DPS, which matters on every boss, for AoE damage, which very rarely matters beyond untalented AE. I see a few areas they could tweak to make Fire more desirable.
1.) Buff Burnout to 10/20/30/40/50% critical damage bonus. This talent is pretty embarrassing when you compare it with Spell Power, this puts it almost in line with it (you know... except worse).
2.) Add another coefficient talent, or tack it onto an existing bad talent. For example, tack 6% additional Fireball scaling onto Hot Streak, since that talent is very underwhelming right now.
3.) Make Living Bomb scale well. Unless this scales well, it isn't worth the point.
4.) Change Firestarter. I don't care what you do to it, so long as it somehow increases single-target DPS. We do not use Flamestrike.
If you MBAM as soon as the proc occurs rather than at the end of your Arcane Blasts:
You have the same chance of a MB proc of
You have a 0.15 chance of casting only one blast, proccing immediately
You have a (1-0.15) = 0.85 chance at least casting two blasts, and a (0.85*0.15) = 0.13 of casting only two
You have a (1-(0.15+0.13)) = 0.72 chance of casting three blasts -- of which (0.72*0.15) = 0.11 will proc MB and (0.72-0.11) = 0.61 will not.
Alt Rotation: 1x Arcane Barrage, 3x Arcane Blast, proc Arcane Missiles as soon as Missile Barage is up
Total ABlast dmg: 4470.29 + 0.85 * 5140.83 + 0.72 * 5811.38 = 13024.19
Total ABlast mana: 126.35 + 0.85 * 345.05 + 0.72 * 637.55 = 878,68
Total ABlast time: 2.19 + 0.85 * 2.19 + 0.72 * 2.19 = 5.6276
Arcane Power: 14.28% uptime * 30% increase = 1.0429 multiplier
Total dmg: (4315.87 + 13024.19 + 0.3859 * 7298.11) * 1.0429 = 21021.11 (my spreadsheet gives 20136.07 with less rounding)
Total time: 1.3138 + 5.62768 + 0.3859 * 2.1897 = 7.7918 seconds
Total mana: (433.11 + 878.68 + 0.3859 * 824.75) * 1.0429 = 1701.63
DPS: 20136.07 / 7.7918 = 2699.76
DPM: 20136.07 / 1701.63 = 12.36
All in all, not really worth the effort over the single ABlast rotation, considering it eats up more mana for limited gain.
If you can sustain it, the extra 19 DPS might be worth it over simple ABar-ABlast-MB(ABar-AM). It's also pretty intuitive -- cast until you proc, then Barrage -> Missile -> start over.
Lets pretend for a moment that for some reason we'd want to trade single target dps for area dps. Some of the changes are positive. World in flames being a crit enhancer means it will in fact work even with the spell damage caps, for example.
The fire tree still bugs me because there are no spammable fire AOE's. Flame strike has too much of its damage tied up in the AOE, and the other two have big cooldowns (and one tosses enemies around, not good in raid situations). I do like the idea of living bomb, but it's a damage enhancer, it's not really a standalone AOE (you should also be spamming other AOE spells while it's cooking off). Even the instant flamestrike is problematic...you have to click target that spell, it doesn't just "go off". So if you are casting instants or otherwise working primarily with keyboard you'll get locked up with your "instant" spell waiting for you to choose the targeting circle.
So fire is the "king of AOE" as long as it mostly does arcane explosions. What's wrong with this picture?
(some kind of explosive scorch debuff option would be nice....put the scorch stack on ALL of the trash or adds. That would have been a far cooler top tier talent than the way burnout ended up given the scorch changes)
I suspect the only "deep fire single target" raid spec option is going to be actually arcane/fire or frostfire. I see some PVP potential in an AOE based deep fire build, certainly in battlegrounds and world PVP, possibly in arena as well. Fire will also be kinda fun for leveling. If nothing changes though, you'd no more raid deep fire than anyone raids with "deep arcane and no T5 bonuses" today. Or raid badly wounded for 1.5 sec pyroblasts, but that seems like a strategy that would work poorly.
If you MBAM as soon as the proc occurs rather than at the end of your Arcane Blasts:
You have the same chance of a MB proc of
You have a 0.15 chance of casting only one blast, proccing immediately
You have a (1-0.15) = 0.85 chance at least casting two blasts, and a (0.85*0.15) = 0.13 of casting only two
You have a (1-(0.15+0.13)) = 0.72 chance of casting three blasts -- of which (0.72*0.15) = 0.11 will proc MB and (0.72-0.11) = 0.61 will not.
Alt Rotation: 1x Arcane Barrage, 3x Arcane Blast, proc Arcane Missiles as soon as Missile Barage is up
Total ABlast dmg: 4470.29 + 0.85 * 5140.83 + 0.72 * 5811.38 = 13024.19
Total ABlast mana: 126.35 + 0.85 * 345.05 + 0.72 * 637.55 = 878,68
Total ABlast time: 2.19 + 0.85 * 2.19 + 0.72 * 2.19 = 5.6276
Arcane Power: 14.28% uptime * 30% increase = 1.0429 multiplier
Total dmg: (4315.87 + 13024.19 + 0.3859 * 7298.11) * 1.0429 = 21021.11 (my spreadsheet gives 20136.07 with less rounding)
Total time: 1.3138 + 5.62768 + 0.3859 * 2.1897 = 7.7918 seconds
Total mana: (433.11 + 878.68 + 0.3859 * 824.75) * 1.0429 = 1701.63
DPS: 20136.07 / 7.7918 = 2699.76
DPM: 20136.07 / 1701.63 = 12.36
All in all, not really worth the effort over the single ABlast rotation, considering it eats up more mana for limited gain.
I felt that there were 2 potential buffs to hotstreak that may make single-target fire more apealing;
the simple one would be to make it proc off only 2 crits in a row, but give the tallent a 5second internal cooldown to prevent rediculous crit streaks. 'Whenever you score 2 spell criticals in a row, the critical strike chance of your next spell is increased by 100%. 5sec cooldown.'
the more complicated one is to have it gain charges; 3 crits in a row increases your crit chance by 60%, each crit caused after this reduces your crit chance by 20% untill the buff is gone.: 'Whenever you score 3 criticals in a Row, you can 60% increased spell crit chance. The next 3 spells cast will reduce this bonus by 20% per spell.'
The nice aspect of the second option is that it gives you more of a 'streak' effect, and more overall single-target crit chance whilst still not being over-the-top since any time you don't crit, you lose the stack and have to start again. the actuall buff numbers can be easilly tweaked to reach a more desirable amount (30%, 3 charges. 50%, 2 charges. however much is balanced.)
The fire tree still bugs me because there are no spammable fire AOE's. Flame strike has too much of its damage tied up in the AOE, and the other two have big cooldowns (and one tosses enemies around, not good in raid situations). I do like the idea of living bomb, but it's a damage enhancer, it's not really a standalone AOE (you should also be spamming other AOE spells while it's cooking off). Even the instant flamestrike is problematic...you have to click target that spell, it doesn't just "go off". So if you are casting instants or otherwise working primarily with keyboard you'll get locked up with your "instant" spell waiting for you to choose the targeting circle.
The instant FS buff will sit on you untill you use it. its really quite easy to aim your mouse while pressing BW/DB hotkeys and then hit your flamestrike hotkey and click for the instant cast without losing any time.
What i'm interested in is using combustion on fire AoE to force a hot streak proc, then blowing it on a blizzard for 100% crit blizzard. The advantage, of course, is that you'd have blizzard ticking for large damage and still get the benefit of the flamestrike DoT. This idea probably works better on an elemental spec (if anyone would take FFb with hot streak), since your blizzard then has ice shards backing it up.
for a build like that to work you'd need to be leeching WC, but other than that you have a viable flamestrike/blizzard rotation getting high crit chance (if hot streak works a certain way with crits you might be able to drop shatter/nova and just rely on hot streak for huge crit chance). blow DB/blastwave when they're cooled, of course.
Does anyone understand the change of pyroblast from 6 to 5 sec? Actually that's a nerf because of the lower coefficient.
Why not changing improved fireball to also reduce pyroblast casttime by 1 sec?
But even then, the spell is still bad and needs some develloper attention. (stronger dot component, ...)
Another broken spell is AM: 5 points improved talent + 3 empowered and still a useless spell if not put another 5 points into a proc which destroys your AB stack when using it, come on ...
Arcane Blast: increase the buff duration to 5 sec and all options are open. (with a little haste ...)
Fire: Move imp scorch to the top of the tree and reduce it to 2 points, similar to arcane aubtelty. It'll be required for every raid spec, same way like now arcane subtelty is required for every specc because of AE.
Btw, give scorch some love in emp. fireball talent so that's not such a pain for fire mages keeping it up (frost and arcane mages will have this penalty ofc.).
Alternatively if you want every tree have its own raid synergy, move it deeper into fire tree, but then also move focus magic deeper (and make it stronger - more stacks for 25raids or let AM increase number of stack instead of consuming, or ...).
Frost: Change Ice Floes to also affect Icy Veins' cd and make it stronger (at least for Icy Veins), move it deeper into frost tree if needed.
Change Deep freeze to also work on targets with 5 stacks of Winter's chill applied (won't happen in pvp, but useful against bosses if the dmg and its scaling is appropriate). The spell has 30 sec. cooldown, so no abuse in pve possible.
A better solution would be to bring back Winter's Grasp in an intelligent way.
Btw, does Winter's Chill debuff work with DK spells?
EDIT: For Improved WE I'd rather like to see WE benefit from (penetration,) crit, haste, hit and spirit gear, better spelldmg, int and sta. scaling, than a longer duration. Also WE getting Icy Veins when the mage activates them would be nice.
Why did you not assume Earth and Moon moonkin debuff? That's a +10% arcane damage damage buff which makes it considerably nicer in comparison to frost... you counting on moonkins continuing to be basically non-viable?
It's actually only 6% (2%, stacks 3 times), and it's included, I just neglected to change its name from the old "Nature's Fury."
Originally Posted by Daydreamer
Still working on that math on the ABx3 rotation with MBAM as soon as it procs, but the DPM number for it in Lhivera's post is a little off... the total mana calculated for ABlast (1108.95) is not used when calculating total mana cost (783.35 is used instead).
Unless I'm missing something, the DPM for the ABx3 rotation is 12.12 -- which is not worth it for an increase of less than 6 DPS.
I include the estimated regen in my mana costs. If a spell costs 500 mana to cast, but you regenerate 50 mana while casting it, I use a cost of 450 mana. What I'm really doing is calculating damage per mana debit, rather than damage per cost of cast.
Originally Posted by MetallicaRulez0
1.) Buff Burnout to 10/20/30/40/50% critical damage bonus. This talent is pretty embarrassing when you compare it with Spell Power, this puts it almost in line with it (you know... except worse).
2.) Add another coefficient talent, or tack it onto an existing bad talent. For example, tack 6% additional Fireball scaling onto Hot Streak, since that talent is very underwhelming right now.
3.) Make Living Bomb scale well. Unless this scales well, it isn't worth the point.
4.) Change Firestarter. I don't care what you do to it, so long as it somehow increases single-target DPS. We do not use Flamestrike.
My feeling is that 60% is about as high as Burnout can go without providing ludicrously high benefit per point. At 35% crit, that's a 10.6% DPS increase for 5 points. Even going that high might require an increase in the mana penalty. And that's nowhere near high enough to make its single-target DPS competitive. We can throw out all kinds of ideas, but I think it comes down to:
- Replace Firestarter with a single-target DPS talent.
- Tack a short-cast Pyro proc onto a PvE talent, such as Hot Streak. What if a Hot Streak proc also gave you a 2-sec cast Pyroblast, for instance?
- Add a +Fire% debuff to another class -- perhaps deep, deep Destruction? Even 5% might be enough.
Originally Posted by kadgar
Does anyone understand the change of pyroblast from 6 to 5 sec? Actually that's a nerf because of the lower coefficient.
Pyro already has a nonstandard coefficient; I don't think it'll necessarily get a coefficient change from this adjustment. The 5-sec cast time is made to synergize with the Fiery Payback cast time reduction to get the time down to 1.5 secs.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Frankly I think we're looking at this in a way that's way too confusing. Between MBAM, Arcane Blast, and Frostbolt, we're talking about 2.5 seconds of base casting regardless of which spell you're casting. We're also looking that regardless of MBAM, Arcane Blast, or Frostbolt, that Arcane Barrage should be better dps, which is why the mention of rotations of ABar/AB are better off casting another ABar *before* casting MBAM.
Reaction time notwithstanding (if you're good enough to recognize MB procs within the gcd after casting ABar then it doesn't matter), the basic principle is that you want to cast ABar every 3 seconds. Everything else, including MBAM, is filler while you're just waiting for ABar's cooldown. Right?
So, if that's accurate and we're looking at purely maximizing ABar casts with MBAM, AB, and Frostbolt as filler, there's no need to look at deep arcane in terms of rotations, just in terms of prioritizations. MBAM should be the best dps, so the question becomes whether or not you're better off casting arcane blast, frostbolt, fireball, or hardcasting arcane missiles. Hardcasting AM doesn't seem like it'd ever really be the best choice, so then it boils down to AB/frostbolt/fireball. Fireball gets nix'ed if you're assuming the build has IV, so it's just arcane blast or frostbolt.
Now, I think the reason why arcane blast looks so mediocre in ABar/AB rotations is because you can't maintain the debuff without some huge amount of haste, which is why ABar/ABx3 seems to be the appealing choice. However the problem there is that you're delaying TWO ABars, which again if the basic principle of deep arcane is to cast ABar every 3 seconds for max dps, would seem to be a worse choice than ABar/frostbolt.
Frankly, I looked at the numbers and didn't really like the setup that Lhiv did or the assumption set, so I've decided to just do my own math for the whole thing on a per-spell basis, which makes looking at rotations a little easier, imo.
Anyway, I'm gonna start the math, numbers should be up in an hour or two.
Maim will break from the same amount of damage that Fear, Entangling Roots etc. breaks with now. It's a flat amount of damage based on the HP pool of the target (its' different for players and creatures), we haven't settled on the right number yet though.
Hadn't seen any replies on this yet, so just thought I'd throw it out there.
Focus Magic a 30 yard casted debuff w/ 50 charges like Hemo. Any direct casted effect burns a charge, so fireball, frost nova, blastwave, and yes, Wands. Molten Armor didn't burn charges or receive extra damage. The damage appears to just factor in, and isn't an extra 'tick' of damage on top of your hit. Arcane Missiles blows 1 charge per cast, but doesn't get the full bonus. AM was ticking for 663 per missile without, then 686 with the debuff up (the lvl 70 version adds 80 dmg).
Waitaminute, wands eat charges? Does wand damage actually increase then? More generally, (although maybe not totally relevant to the mage class) does wand damage scale with any stat in WotLK?
Also, with regard to Focused power, does anyone else read the talent as being "All spells cast on the target behave as if the caster had an additional 150 spellpower"? Sort of like an offensive version of Amplify magic.
I include the estimated regen in my mana costs. If a spell costs 500 mana to cast, but you regenerate 50 mana while casting it, I use a cost of 450 mana. What I'm really doing is calculating damage per mana debit, rather than damage per cost of cast.
I don't think that's the discrepancy. From your theorycraft post:
The figure you've calculated for total ABlast Mana is 1108.95 -- this figure includes regeneration and Clearcasting. Later on though, when you calculate total mana used, you use a different figure.
Note that as these numbers are completely arbitrary, they'll be affected the same way by partial resists and the unavoidable 1% resist. Because of that, I'm ignoring resists completely. It'll inflate the numbers a little, but again, they're arbitrary, so it doesn't matter. Same with haste... it affects all spells the same (not counting the discontinuous nature of ABar's cooldown filler), so I'm just discounting it as we're all aware of how haste affects ABar rotations.
So it seems MBAM is actually higher priority than ABar... at least with these numbers. The same goes for frostbolt being better in this build than a Abar/AB rotation, at least damage-wise... AB is still better dpm because it's cheap as hell with no debuff stacks. A weird consequence of that is that you could drop the 3 points in Incineration and pick up Piercing Ice, as well as dropping a point in Spell Impact to max Arcane Mind... but that really hurts Arcane Blast which is great dps when spammed.
Also, the math for Arcane Missiles seems off. I ran the numbers twice but got the same result... so I could have made the same mistake twice but I don't think I did. Anyway, if you see any errors speak up, but again these numbers weren't designed to show what dps mages should be doing, just to be an example of scaling.
EDIT:
Frostbolt, now with 100% more cowbell- err Frozen Rune Weapon!
The 3 second AB stack is either terrible design, or telling us not to bother with AB except as "execute" spam. While the passive haste to weave in instants will be reasonably achievable with gear and 25 raid buffs, it leaves little room latency and any MB proc that is used will drop the AB stack. The AB debuff should be increased to 5 seconds to allow better use of the spec in 5 man instances, heroics, 10 mans (where additional passive haste buffs may not be as available), and entry level raiding where there isn't the haste to support the rotation.
The last thing I want to see for mages is the affliction->destruction jump that warlocks had in TBC. I'd rather see a gradual rise in DPS with gear as I saw with both fire and frost in TBC, than play something suboptimal until just before endgame.
Celani, my main concern with such a change is mana. Right now with the short debuf timer you have very good control over your mana usage; a longer debuf removes that choice and forces you to look to something other than arcane blast if mana starts becoming a serious issue. At which point a heavier investment in frost becomes nearly mandatory rather than optional for deep arcane builds.
I like the existing debuf timer as it tends to preserve the purity of deep arcane.
If you don't want to make that 33%+ haste jump, that's a simple question of gear substitution. (Outside of heroism, at any rate.)
Celani, my main concern with such a change is mana. Right now with the short debuf timer you have very good control over your mana usage; a longer debuf removes that choice and forces you to look to something other than arcane blast if mana starts becoming a serious issue. At which point a heavier investment in frost becomes nearly mandatory rather than optional for deep arcane builds.
I like the existing debuf timer as it tends to preserve the purity of deep arcane.
If you don't want to make that 33%+ haste jump, that's a simple question of gear substitution. (Outside of heroism, at any rate.)
What about spell pushback, and what about the fact that you have to spend 7.5 seconds to bring Arcane Blast back up to non subpar dps. (or 5 if you're doing the two-stack)
In a heavy spell pushback environment, I would expect arcanists to rely mostly on arcane barrage and instants. (As they would in a mobility situation.) Arcane blast is a stand and nuke spell, and increasing the debuf timer doesn't fundamentally alter that.
I don't think that's the discrepancy. From your theorycraft post:
You are correct! Thanks, I'll fix that.
ETA: I find it curious that so many people are willing to assume a Tier 10 5-point Balance Druid talent, but not a Tier 3 1-point Frost DK talent. Mind you, I don't know how much Frost damage the weapon buff delivers, but it would be increased by 27% by debuffs, and would boost damage (and hence threat) from all the DK's various other Frost abilities by 10% as well, at virtually zero cost.
Last edited by Lhivera : 07/29/08 at 11:56 PM.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Hello all. I have been lurking on these boards for over a year now. With the release of the new talents I thought it was time to join the discussion.
I tried to read and process as much of this massive thread as I could. Apologies if this has been covered and I missed it. Has anyone considered a deep fire spec that uses frostfire bolt as its primary nuke?
It is currently looking like frost damage from DK's is crap, other than their talented spells, so the only spec of DK that would be using FRW is a deep frost spec. As the frost tree is awful other than for resistance fights, no DK is going to be specced it unless it is needed for a resistance fight. Now, whether FRW is better than a sharpening stone or weight stone for DPS remains to be seen, but I imagine that a DPS DK is going to want weight stones to improve their 2H weapon speeds. Plus, speccing for FRW requires them to give up either +25% damage on auto attacks or 5% crit on melee attacks. So, FRW would only be useful if it pushes frost DPS up by a considerable margin.
As for Earth and Moon (Nature's Fury), a moonkin will be speccing it for themselves, and moonkin are looking viable enough to be considered for a raiding spot.
ETA: I find it curious that so many people are willing to assume a Tier 10 5-point Balance Druid talent, but not a Tier 3 1-point Frost DK talent. Mind you, I don't know how much Frost damage the weapon buff delivers, but it would be increased by 27% by debuffs, and would boost damage (and hence threat) from all the DK's various other Frost abilities by 10% as well, at virtually zero cost.
Honestly I was never very interested in Death Knights and didn't notice the change. I had thought that it was still gained via Runeforging, for which it was basically unusable. Luckily it's a simple +10% bonus scalar, so I'll just edit my old post with another entry including FRW.
If you're speccing deep unholy as a DK for raiding ( for ebon plaguebringer), you're most assuredly spending at least 10 in frost for the 10% frost/shadow damage talent. Going from there it almost seems stupid not to take FRW if you're already speccing for raid debuffing, so it's fair to assume every raid will have it; this is doubley true if you have a full fledged frost dk tagging along.
Does anyone understand the change of pyroblast from 6 to 5 sec? Actually that's a nerf because of the lower coefficient.
You are wrong. On live its 1.15 multiplier and 20% on the dot. On PTR, it seems to be 1.10 / 20. Hardly a nerf considering its 5s cast time now.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
We talked about this recently at the Worldwide Invitational actually. We are looking into allowing players to basically have two talent specs that they can switch between but we are still working out the exact details so we will have to wait and see exactly how it will function in-game.
So, how cool would it be to have one of your specs be a deep fire aoe spec, and the second be a punishing single target arc/x, elementalist, etc., build? Assuming of course that we can switch between them on the fly and not have to port to IF :P
I felt that there were 2 potential buffs to hotstreak that may make single-target fire more apealing;
the simple one would be to make it proc off only 2 crits in a row, but give the tallent a 5second internal cooldown to prevent rediculous crit streaks. 'Whenever you score 2 spell criticals in a row, the critical strike chance of your next spell is increased by 100%. 5sec cooldown.'
the more complicated one is to have it gain charges; 3 crits in a row increases your crit chance by 60%, each crit caused after this reduces your crit chance by 20% untill the buff is gone.: 'Whenever you score 3 criticals in a Row, you can 60% increased spell crit chance. The next 3 spells cast will reduce this bonus by 20% per spell.'
The nice aspect of the second option is that it gives you more of a 'streak' effect, and more overall single-target crit chance whilst still not being over-the-top since any time you don't crit, you lose the stack and have to start again. the actuall buff numbers can be easilly tweaked to reach a more desirable amount (30%, 3 charges. 50%, 2 charges. however much is balanced.)
Something like First crit=10% crit buff, if you crit again it's upped to 20% and if you crit a third time its upped to 30%. When you get a noncrit it resets the buff. Maybe even 5%/10%/15% instead. You use combustion to stack the effect and then you get a nice little crit boost untill you stop critting. Or maybe even hot streak increasing the damage of subsequent crits or something. The current version is really weak and really unimaginative.
07/29/08, 8:36 PM
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